The Prince of Risk

2

Astor gazed at the tall, athletic brunette standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Alex. A little past work hours, even for you.”

“Did you make it?” she asked, taking in his dripping shorts, the towel wrapped around his shoulders.

“More or less.” Reflexively, he pulled the towel tighter. He didn’t want her to see the red, inflamed skin where his back had struck the water.

“Showing off again?”

“Raised two million and change.”

“Next time write them a check. It’s safer.”

“You care.”

“Your daughter cares.”

The woman wore jeans and a navy T-shirt with three yellow letters stenciled above the breast. Her eyes were hazel, her skin olive and taut, lines forming at the corners of her eyes like cracks in an Old Master’s painting. She’d pulled her thick, glossy hair into a ponytail, which showcased the angles of her face, the high cheekbones, the sharp Roman nose. As was her custom, she wore no makeup. Mascara didn’t go with the Glock she carried on her belt. Against his every wish, he felt something tighten in his stomach, a desire he thought was long quelled, a longing even. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had chosen wisely when they’d admitted this one to the academy. Her name was Alessandra Ambrosiani Forza, but she went by Alex, not Alessandra, and never Astor. For eighteen years she had been his wife.

“If you’re coming for the clambake,” said Astor, “you’re late.”

“I got the invitation. Sorry. I was busy.”

“You still knocking down front doors and rousting homegrown bin Ladens out of their beds in Queens and Rockaway?”

“I’m still at CT-26, if that’s what you mean. I’m running it now.”

“So I heard,” said Astor. “Congrats.”

“Speaking of front doors, you want to ask me in?”

Astor threw back an arm. “Won’t you come in?”

Alex brushed past him, and he noted that her cheeks were flushed, her eyes too puffy for just another long day. “This isn’t about Katie?” he asked worriedly.

“Katie’s fine.”

Astor was wary of his ex’s civil response. Habit made him jump back to offensive. “And home alone, I take it.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“That’s two years shy of being an adult last time I looked.”

“Not in Manhattan.”

“When I was sixteen, I was-”

“Drinking fog cutters at Trader Vic’s while you were playing hooky from Choate,” retorted Alex. “Or whatever rich boy’s academy you were getting kicked out of that year.”

“It was Deerfield and Kent.”

“Stop!” she said. “I’m here about your father.”

Astor took a step back. He swallowed, his throat tightening. “What about him?”

Alex placed a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Bobby. Your father’s dead.”

For a moment Astor didn’t respond. He was aware of the music blaring, of several men shouting, and knew that some kind of fracas had started out by the pool. He had been expecting the news since spotting the Dodge. He had not been able to think of another reason that would bring her so far from home so late at night.

Dad was dead.

He had not loved the man. The two shared a long adversarial history. More Hatfield and McCoy than father and son. Years had passed since they’d spoken. And so it was a fright when he felt the roiling in his gut, the prickly warmth at the corners of his eyes, the geyser of loss and emotion welling inside him with an uncontrollable and overwhelming rapidity.

“Bobby…are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said woodenly. “I…I saw him at the Four Seasons last week. He looked…good. He looked healthy. What happened?”

“Can we go to the study?” asked Alex. “It’s a little loud.”

“Sure.” Astor led the way up the stairs. He was thankful for the respite. With each step he tamped down his recalcitrant emotions, much as a man uses a carpet to beat down a stubborn flame. He reminded himself that Edward Astor had no claims on his feelings. The father had ceded those long ago, and it was his fault, not the son’s.

The black belt.

The memory came to Astor like a thunderclap. In an instant his stomach calmed. His eyes dried. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he’d stuffed any feelings he had for his father back inside the impregnable vault where he’d kept them locked away for thirty years.

The study was small and airy, with bookshelves lining the walls and traditional furniture. Astor closed the door behind them and the noise from the party dissipated. “What happened?” he said. “Heart attack? Car accident? I’d have heard if he had cancer.”

Alex stood facing him, hands hanging by her sides. “This evening at eleven p.m., your father, Charles Hughes, and Martin Gelman were driving together to visit the president,” she began. “Something went wrong with their car after they entered the White House grounds. I don’t have the details, but apparently it left the road and drove across the South Lawn. The Secret Service thought the car was headed directly for the White House and posed a threat. They opened fire. A bullet punctured the gas tank. There was an explosion.”

“All of them…dead?”

“Yes.”

Astor considered this, the enormity of the event dawning on him. “Let me get this right. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, the treasury secretary, and the head of the New York Stock Exchange were traveling together at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night to see the president. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Astor opened a cabinet in the bookshelf that housed a television and searched for the remote. “The markets must be going apeshit.”

Alex grabbed his arm. “What are you doing? Who cares about the markets?”

“He would have.”

“You’re not him.”

“If there’s more to it, I need to know. My god, the president must be in his bunker in Maryland by now.”

“Bobby!”

“Okay. You win.” Astor put down the remote. He had people working for him who were better placed to respond to a crisis like this. If anything happened to materially affect the firm, they’d let him know.

“I cared for him,” she said.

“I know you did,” he said, not unkindly.

“So I take it you never reached out?”

“It was up to him.”

“How does that matter now?”

“Edward Astor died tonight, and I’m sorry for that. But my father passed away a long time ago.”

Alex shook her head. “But it was just business. A stupid argument about money.”

“No, Alex. It was never about business.” That had been the excuse. A business disagreement was the easiest scapegoat. Astor wanted to say more. He wanted to say that he’d picked up the phone a thousand times to call and put it right back down. That she might know Edward Astor as a kind and respectful father-in-law, as the affectionate grandfather to their daughter, but she didn’t know him as he did. If she asked him right then, he’d tell her.

But Alex shrugged and looked away. She walked to the window and straightened her shoulders, and when she turned around, the woman he’d married was gone. The beast that was the Federal Bureau of Investigation had retaken control of her. “You’ll receive a formal notification any minute,” she said. “You can call the Secret Service to fill you in. They can provide you with more information. I have to go.”

Astor stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Allie, stop. Come on. What do you want? Tears? You know how it was between us.”

She knocked his hand away. “Don’t call me that. You don’t have the right.”

“Come on,” he said. “It’s me.”

“We’re divorced. Get that through your head. I came here as a courtesy. Nothing more.”

“Just doing your job, right?” Astor peeled back a curtain and looked down into the forecourt. A strapping blond man stood next to the passenger door of the Dodge. Like her, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Astor recognized him as one of her “young lions,” the name she gave to her stable of capable, motivated, exclusively male subordinates.

“All this went down on the White House lawn?” he said, returning his attention to his ex-wife. The mood between them had swung back to its old bluff and battery-acid self.

“It’s going to be a big one,” said Alex.

Astor could see the spark in his wife’s eye, that ember of excitement that only her job could provide. Two years after they’d separated, and a full ten months since their divorce had been finalized, it still upset him. “If I were you, I’d get on a plane to D.C. first thing,” he said. “Take the G4. I’ll call and get it fueled up, see that a crew’s there in an hour.”

“It’s not my case.”

“Might want to put in for a transfer. There’re going to be a lot of headlines for whoever heads this thing up. Could be your chance to get to D.C. I know how much you want that deputy director’s slot.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I’m just saying,” Astor went on. “Your career cost us our marriage. Might as well get your money’s worth.”

“This from a man who didn’t set foot inside his house before nine on weeknights and didn’t bother coming home at all on weekends.”

“Look what it got us.”

Alex approached, her face an inch from his. The spark in her eye was still there, but it was caused by anger, not excitement. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m looking. Not a whole helluva lot, from where I stand.”

She pushed past him and left the study. Astor followed her down the stairs. “What were you doing out here anyway? You said my father was killed an hour ago. No way you could have made it out from the city that fast.”

Alex stopped at the front door. “Let me know when the funeral is. Katie and I would like to pay our respects.”

Astor looked at her attire again-the jeans, the T-shirt, the hair pulled back. He observed that she was wearing her work boots, too. He had his answer.

“Hey,” he called. “Be careful.”

But Alex was already in the driver’s seat, slamming the door.